


Unfinished WIPs

by Bisabis



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 04:32:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14300871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bisabis/pseuds/Bisabis
Summary: A collection of unfinished WIPs I'm too busy to complete at the moment. Or ever.1: Lyrics and Paintings - DaveJade. A crossover of a movie I watched called "Words and Pictures" about older teachers finding love. Jade is a painting teacher and Dave is a writing teacher at an arts junior college, who couldn't be more different. A spark of their collective differences causes a war between the two colleagues and the students in their classes, arguing about which was better. Words? Or pictures? Why not both?





	Unfinished WIPs

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning, this chapter ends very annoyingly.

The day she walked into the Skaia Academy teacher’s lounge, it was as if the air had been colored. Not as much as your son Dirk was born, but the palette had certainly diversified. Perhaps it was her scarf, similar to that of a lime tint, making the drab room brighter, or maybe it was the way her white shirt balanced her conservative wardrobe consisting of a long matching skirt and contrasting dark hair. Freckles dotted her skin on every surface she allowed others to see, which for the moment was her face, neck, and hands. Even so, his eye did not fall upon the cast on her wrist or the cane under her weight until she sat mere feet from him on the sofa across from him. The pulchritude poured out of this woman just by walking.

He put his feet up in the stereotypical relaxing position, his ten-year-old converse stained with memories passing down to the cushion. “Sup,” he said casually.

She looks up. “Hello,” she said with a smile. She returned to spacing out, focusing on the wall beyond him.

“What’s your name?”

She wrinkled her brow. “Didn't you hear?” she asked curtly.

“I usually tune him out after a few words. What’s your name?”

“Miss Jade Harley.”

“What do you teach, Miss Jade Harley?”

“Advanced art.”

“Do you ever speak in more than four syllables?”

“What’s your name?” she asked back. Clever.

“Mister Dave Strider. Oh, and to answer your question, advanced writing. I’m a lyricist, specifically.”

“I didn’t ask.”

Salty. “Might I ask if you’ve ever taught a class before? Usually they hire people right from their professions with a teaching certificate. But they also pay for one to be issued. From your age, I can tell they sought you out specifically, like myself. I’m a published songwriter, and so you must be a fairly famous artist. Am I right?”

She pondered his amazing detective work for a moment. “No, yes, correct.” She then gave him an unamused smile. “I have to go now.” She stood shakily.

Dave let out a scoff, cool and equally standoffish as her attitude. “That’s five!”

She didn’t reply and walked out the door, waving at Mr. E cordially. Dave followed suit, but stopped at Mr. E’s usual spot by the door.

“What’s her deal?” Dave asked the only friend he had left in the dismal, pedigree-wrought campus he called work.

“To quote the thesaurus, guarded,” Mr. E, aka John Egbert, the school’s local piano prodigy-slash-resident music theory professor, answered in his usual straightforward tone. He can be pretty salty too, but chooses not to when they are speaking of important matters. Like women.

“How so?”

“A divorcee like you has no chance.”

“Really? I kind of felt that she was into me.”

“What, no multi-syllable word to trump my ability to sense others’ inhibitions?”

“You speak absurd, incogitable nonsense.”

John rolled his eyes. “I had to ask.”

Dave left the teacher’s lounge that day, wondering a washout like him did to even cross paths with the one called Miss Jade Harley.

* * *

“Ms. Harley, what if I don’t want to be a painter?” Eridan Ampora, perhaps one of the most privileged students here. The girl sitting next to him, Feferi Peixes, shushed him. Some of these names they give children nowadays were downright odd. 

“Well, that’s fine with me. In fact, I would be surprised if any of us would want to be solely painters.” She went to Aradia Megido and Sollux Captor, who had been sketching anime doodles back and forth in between projects all week. “Take these two, who have no sense of authority. They paint, yes, but they can also be quite the team of mangaka.” She then traveled to Equius Zahaak, a regular meathead with a good head on his shoulders for art. “Try as he might to paint, his strong suit is actually pottery.” Addressing the rest, she said, “As for the rest of you, being solely a painter is your personal choice. But being a digital artist and an architect are undoubtedly some of our more… useful artists.”

“But what if I wanted to do something you know,  _ not _ art? No offense, but this class is pretty damn boring. Art isn’t fun. It’s just there.”

What could she say to that? Plenty. “True. Art is there. But it’s also saying something. It could also be a dedication. Or it could just be utter nonsense.” She ended with an informative smile.

“That’s what Mr. Strider said,” Tavros Nitram, a shy boy to say the least, said. Jade’s smile twitched slightly, like glass had just broken and she was trying to keep her cool. The whole class started whispering to each other, mainly telling him to shut the hell up.

“Oh he did, did he?” Jade sauntered to his desk. He blushed when she overshadowed his sketchbook. “What else did he say, Tavros?”

“W-well,” he stammered, “he said something about a war.”

“Damn it, Toreador!” Vriska Serket shouted. She was always bullying him. Jade wonders if there’s anything else to be done besides a slap on the wrist. She reported Vriska for this many times, but nothing had been done so far.

Terezi Pyrope growled as she stood up, defending Tavros. “If none of you Commies are going to say it, then I will! Mr. Strider has declared war on you Ms. Harley, and there’s going to be a demonstration tomorrow about it!”

Jade stared at the tunnel-visioned girl, stunned. She had no recollection of being declared upon. Unless…

Mr. Dave Strider approached her two weeks ago, a mere week after she’d been hired. He accused her of not speaking in complicated words. She denied it. He asked her to play a game where they go through the alphabet saying words five syllables or more, and whoever cannot come up with a new one loses. He started with avariciousness. She countered with barbarianism. He continued with counterproductive. She paused and said incorrigible. Well if you’re going to cheat so early then why don’t we add more syllables? You give me little time to study. You’d better be prepared for a war, then. She walked away by then, but she heard him mumbling something that she didn’t care to hear as she hobbled away on her new cane.

Jade could have slapped her forehead right then and there. That disagreeable little man. Figuratively little, anyway. He was taller than she was. Instead, she rubbed her finger joints out of nervous habit and told the students to keep working.

She went home that night alone, on the bus, visualizing what she wanted to paint that night. She was inspired by everything. Landscapes, buildings, feelings, people…

Her sister Jane opened the door to their smallish home without Jade even having to knock, like she’d been waiting. “Jade, you’re late again!” she scolded.

“Grading art projects takes longer than most realize,” Jade answered. She sighed and struggled to remove her jacket. Her joints had been inflamed since the final bell, and the cold weather was impervious to stop the pain. Impervious, still only three syllables. 

“Here, let me help,” Jane offered. Jade let her, but not happily. She was used to doing things herself. She lived just fine for forty-five years, but then this little disease her mother passed down came along and ruined everything. The doctors all said she needed help doing small things. Jade had been finding new ways to paint, despite the pain. Just last night, she bought a mop to use as a large brush. The canvas took up the entire garage-slash-studio. She was gravely dissatisfied with the results. Dissatisfied was four syllables. She mentally took note.

“Thanks for making dinner,” Jade said, shrugging out of her coat and pushing past her sister. She gave her sister the key and sometimes she came over to make dinner for twelve, then let Jade eat the leftovers for the next week. Jade had no knack for cooking, so she was grateful for Jane’s company.

“It’s no problem! That’s what family is for, right?”

“Yeah.” Jade continued her way to her studio, where she started a new painting.

* * *

Dave had heard a rumor that Ms. Jade Harley had in fact been hired at another school. Simply put, she was fired during orientation before the school year even started for lightly hitting a student for making fun of her cane. 

He needed to resolve this curious thing immediately. Even a small school like this wouldn’t hire anyone with violence on their record. 

He came to work early for once, hangover from his overnight imbibement notwithstanding, and asked her right out. Not out, like dating, which he also considered, but directly about the incident.

“Is it true that you hit a student with your cane?” he asked.

“Unimaginative stultiloquence...” she muttered. Not bad. “Do you really want to know?”

“Harley, I need to know. Curiosity is in my nature.” 

She seemed to savor his curiosity with the way she curved her lips and narrowed her gaze. “It was another teacher.” She winked and hobbled off to her classroom. Was it another teacher who made fun of her? Or another teacher who hit the student? Was it even violence? 

Dave Strider literally felt his infatuation become ensorcelled into the vast unknown that was Jade Harley.

He himself had been so distracted the past few minutes, that he failed to notice the presentation of his students’ work around him in the hallway. Of course, Nepeta Leijon had written a wonderful piece about the environment, that saving endangered species was mainly about facts and not only pictures for tugging the hearts of the public. Bottom line was that facts and figures simply tell more than art. Dave nodded to himself in agreement. He reminded himself to officially declare war on her over lunch. Although, Ms. Harley seemed to know that already. 

The very next period, he heard Vriska and Terezi colluding in passing, leaning against a pillar outside his door. Notorious conspirators to say the least. 

“I don’t know, Vriska, I think art speaks louder than words. Ms. Harley came up with some intriguing points this morning.”

“Terezi, Terezi, Terezi. She’s only saying that because she figured out Mr. Strider’s war when Tavros tattled, and she’s obviously coming up with a plan to undermine him at his own game. She probably doesn’t even do art anymore. She’s a washout, like every other teacher here.” None of the observations about his personality or life choices was news. He couldn’t really care what these children thought, no matter how true it was. He hadn’t published or collaborated any lyrics in six years. A man his age shouldn’t lyricize that often, anyway. Not a lot of fresh-faced musicians approach him for solidarity purposes. Such practices, especially with those who are younger than twenty-four, are considered “robbing the cradle.” And he isn’t even talking about up-and-coming females in the rapping industry. As a forty-nine-year-old washout, Dave would be viewed as doing such things. Which was exactly the opposite of his life goals.

“Doesn’t that make them perfect for each other?” Terezi crowed loudly. It was like she knew he was right behind them. It wasn’t creeping, it was monitoring the halls like he was supposed to do between classes. Which he didn’t care to do very often. 

Vriska turned and saw him. Her gaze pierced his shades and looked right into his soul. She sneered, amused. “Indubitably.” Vriska, like Dave, was all talk and no action. Her best trait was scrutiny. Fortunately, Terezi had no interest in her opinions. His reputation had been upheld.

The warning bell rang and cued them to return to class, which they did. This new development had him little time to deliberate the next lesson. He’d only been teaching three years, and he was still pulling lessons out of his ass. To put things mildly, they were wildly developed and in the heat of the moment. 

This war between the finest of arts gave him a new purpose. He was going to win, to come out on top. And that’s not an innuendo for his inner child to exploit.

* * *

Jade had a plan, for sure, and she knew just the student to showcase.

The day that the main hallway of the school had been decorated with the words and essays of why words are better than pictures, she prepared a wordy argument with Strider over lunch. He started this whole deal with the five-syllable challenge, which she was actually starting to enjoy, and he was going to end it with some other huge plan. She doesn’t know him very well yet, but she feels like this was only going to get bigger.

“Nepeta, I need you,” she said to her star art student privately. Nepeta had a knack for both realism and being pleasing to the eye. Her human anatomy needed work, but her beast anatomy was superb. “This painting in particular is exactly what I had in mind.”

“Ms. Harley, are you sure you don’t want Aradia or Feferi?” she said, looking at her piece forlornly. It was a beautifully colored, but still rough around the edges, a piece of art and Jade was convinced that all it needed was a little motivation and some direction.

“I’m sure. I want this painting for the hallway showcase.”

“But I already did something for the hallway showcase.”

“I know, I read it.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I did some minor edits here, but nothing huge, and I haven't written anything past the final conversation.  
> My original plans were to make this a longer oneshot, exploring why Dave was the drinker and what disease impaired Jade's art. After I started writing this, the upd8s showed Rose had developed as the alcoholic one, and I hadn't thought about that before. I wanted a straight movie copy. But now that I'm posting it, I could have had a backstory where Rose had left his life for some reason (death or otherwise) which he knew that she drank, and then turned him to do so at a later age. *shrug emoji*


End file.
